I’m pretty sure they don’t force everyone to shoot lots of multi camera 4K videos just because the model serves their needs in other ways.

About half of the people I help choose phones would be fine with 64 GB, me included. There’s no point making them buy a bunch of flash memory they will never use just to get the better still camera that they want.

> About half of the people I help choose phones would be fine with 64 GB. There’s no point making them buy a bunch of flash memory they will never use just to get the better still camera that they want.

But would you be counseling these people to get the iPhone Pro in the first place? I would guess that most folks who want the Pro would want more than 64 GB.

iCloud storage makes it fairly easy to not keep everything you've ever recorded on your phone, it really depends on the user. Back when you kept all your music and all your photos/video it was more critical to have a ton of storage locally.

Most people buying the expensive model will probably opt for more storage, but for those that don't need it I don't see a problem with offering a lower tier.

iCloud storage costs money. If you want to back up a phone that has 64 GB of storage you're going to pay $36/yr or more. Keep your phone for 2-3 years, and you're paying $70-$100 extra. Might as well quadruple your storage and skip the cloud.

I have no problem with them offering a lower tier either. That's what the non-Pro iPhone 11 is for.

I guess we have different ideas of pro users. I'll take the cloud storage / backup any day of the week. If you're really doing the math on $3 a month you probably shouldn't be looking at a $1000 phone regardless of storage capacity.

We do have different ideas of Pro users. I don't know any who use iCloud, which has reliability issues and is inside a walled garden. I'm as big an Apple fan as anyone, but iCloud is a joke.

I've even asked Genius Bar employees exactly how people are supposed to use the iCloud photo backup. They've admitted that they don't really know what to make of the system, which is not transparent with regard to what photos have been downloaded where. It is difficult for the average user to understand how the file-shrinking system works with photos, and which photos exist only in the cloud versus on their machines.

It's an iPhone backup, of course it's a "walled garden". It works really well, maybe you haven't used it in years. I can literally throw my phone into the ocean, walk into an Apple Store and within a short time be right back to where I was. About the only things that get lost are Face ID and Apple Pay, which don't last through any backup because the Secure Element is one way.

Not all iPhone backups are walled gardens. I can back up to my computer, and back that up to various local/cloud drives. I don't want another thing that's wedded to an ecosystem that I might leave at some point.

Also, if I'm already paying for generic cloud storage services, why should I pay for Apple-specific cloud services, at a more expensive price per GB?

Can't even acres the files on Android...

Can you access your Android backup from iOS? I'm talking about the OS level backup/restore functionality, not generic file storage a la Dropbox.

Now you have a giant phone, tons of photos, and no backup. People with the bigger phone are probably more likely to be buying the extra $36/yr, not less.

I back my phone up locally, just like I always have. It's the only way to get a full backup of all app states and data. iCloud only backs up certain data.

Most people arent plugging their phone into a computer, even weekly.

Apple also has created a super terrible backup system, where iCloud and iTunes cant work together. Its very dumb that once I switch to local, that I lose iCloud. Maybe I want to go on vacation for a week, without my computer, and then come back and resume local backups. Why cant iTunes use iCloud as part of its version history??

> Most people arent plugging their phone into a computer, even weekly.

The phones have synced wirelessly for quite a long while now. And with wireless charging on the newer models, doing so is just so damn easy.

> Its very dumb that once I switch to local, that I lose iCloud.

Can’t you still rely on iCloud for saving and backing up app data, while retaining the full local sync and backup in iTunes? I don’t recall iCloud being disabled when locally syncing, and am pretty sure apps still save data to iCloud on my devices.

> Why cant iTunes use iCloud as part of its version history??

Is that really necessary when iTunes can already sync and backup the whole device as it is when you activate the sync/backup process?

Wireless but still needs power, no? And my computer has to be on?

The rest of my complaint is mostly about how complicated a restore becomes if I was using local backup, and then arent home for a while, and need to remerge local and cloud backups. Last I remember, the interface makes you choose one or the other to restore, and then your version history gets all mucked up, as the one you choose becomes the new golden branch.

> Wireless but still needs power, no? And my computer has to be on?

Don't you charge your phone, in range of your computer?

Not anymore. iCloud backs up app states and data. I restore multiple devices from the cloud regularly and I wouldn’t do so if app meta data wasn’t stored on iCloud.

> iCloud backs up app states and data.

Although I believe the app developers have to be aware of this and utilise the various storage options correctly - certainly in my latest restore, a whole bunch of apps had lost their state (logins, etc.) Most disconcerting and aggravatingly inconvenient.

iCloud storage will not help people while they are recording 4k 60FPS.

Fine, make 64 for base users, but it's still a d* move to go from 64 GB right to 256 GB.

That's just marketing to make sure you buy the more expensive models while base model appears to be somewhat reasonably priced. Usual marketing mindhack.

Theres also a crazy amount of enterprise purchases who dont care about storage. Everything is stored off device, and an MDM is keeping whats on the device to a minimum.

Companies would still be buying 32GB by the truckfull if it was available. Apple was right to discontinue it because 32GB wasnt enough to run the OS anymore, while also being a usable phone.

Since you cant run a phone without iOS, and stripping the OS down isnt an option, I think they should be legally required to be truthful in advertising and sell it as a 50-55GB iPhone, probably 50 if they plan on using some of the space for device upgrades.

> Apple was right to discontinue it because 32GB wasnt enough to run the OS anymore, while also being a usable phone.

I use 20 GB on my iPhone SE quite comfortably. It's absolutely enough to be usable.

You also can’t take video or pictures at the resolution of the newer iPhones - requiring more storage.

My iPhone can take 4K video and 12 MP photos, the same as the newest iPhones.

The SE can only do 4K video at 30FPS, so it uses half the space the newer iPhones do (since most users will use 60FPS).

Sure, but it still means that it’s possible to use your phone comfortably with 32 GB of storage.

Although HEVC/HEIC has roughly halved these storage requirements.

> Theres also a crazy amount of enterprise purchases who dont care about storage.

Agreed, but that's what iPhone 11 is for... There's virtually no commercial reason for 95% of enterprise users to have a Pro version.

A Pro version for most of 2020 that can shoot multiple videos at the same time in 4k, with 64gb... I don't know, doesn't sit well with me. I'm all for keeping the base model basic and as low-cost as possible to those who needn't anything more. But then either reasonably price your storage, or create a 128gb option in between, especially if you don't allow SD cards. And especially when Apple is just fine offering 128gb on the 11, but not the Pro... It's a bit much.

Not that its an enterprise case, but personally id get the Pro for the OLED screen moreso than the camera.

Id maybe bet the other reason they dont offer 128 on the pro is supply chain related, they have all their 128 dedicated to the standard model.

There is no need to do mental gymnastics on this.

The reason is simple: profit.

Doesn't Apple support deleting builtin apps from the phone now?

You can remove the icons from the home screen, but it doesn’t actually delete the app from the device storage. They’ve said that’s in case you need or want one of the apps again; it’ll “reinstall” essentially instantly.

Oh sure, I think everyone understands and expects this to some extent. But the Pro model should not have the same base storage as the non-Pro model. Especially with all the emphasis on the professional-level cameras on the iPhone Pro.

The sensors on the Pro model is still 12MPs. HEIC can compress the output of these sensors in an hard to imagine way. A movie takes around 60MB per minute in 1080p30. Photos are also somewhat negligible now.

I think it's still an issue for video. Who's buying a $1000+ "pro camera system" to record 1080p30? I'm sure the bitrates for 4K60 are still pretty high.

4K60 is 400 MB per minute. 24GB/hr.

I still use my iPhone as a Palm handheld with GSM functionality, like a glorified Treo. While I take a lot of photos, video is a rarity for me. So in my case, 1080p30 is alright.

OTOH, I also have a Sony A7iii so, I'm not confined to my iPhone for imagery if I need something really high quality.

People who want to take high quality pictures and don’t really care about video.

32GB of video at 4K is still ~2 hours of video at 30fps. I take a fair amount of pictures, but I don’t think I have taken 30 minutes of video in the last 4 years.

The sensors may have stayed the same, but isn't it taking 3 photos now instead of 1? We don't yet know whether it automatically saves the telephoto, wide, and ultra-wide photos separately, but from the rumors I'd heard it retains them all. Perhaps this is a setting that can be changed, but it means that if you want to use the phone to it's capability, you're going to have a lot more photo storage than before.

One presentation today made a big deal about "able to record 2 video streams at once (among the 4 cameras)".

Capture rate for multiple streams is one problem. Storage space is another, solved largely by the seamless iCloud integration; get an unlimited data plan or Wi-Fi connection, and the imagery will all just migrate off the device until needed wherever.

A landscape image takes 1.5MB when compressed with HEIC[0]. Even it stores all three of them and uses a bit less compression due to better lenses and sensors, it'll be around 6MB per image. It's very efficient for the resolution if you ask me.

[0]: Inspected a fairly complex sunset shot taken with my iPhone X.

The non-pro model looks like the successor to the XR, no telephoto camera, the screen is LCD not OLED with lower PPI, and a cheaper frame (aluminum not stainless steel) and maybe one or two more things I forgot.

Yea. It's for the "starting at"-price which can then be set even lower as the more expensive non-pro variants or products from the competition.

As long as you have a decent iCloud data subscription, all that 4k video quickly gets whisked away to the cloud.

The 64GB on the device effectively houses installed apps and an effective cache of thumbnails and downloaded content.

I have the 256 GB config and the needle basically never moves up from about 45 GB.

The problem with keeping it in iCloud is how do you get it all out of iCloud? Say onto Linux, or into another cloud like Dropbox or Google Drive?

You can dump them all via the iCloud.com website if you so desire, the iCloud software on Windows can do the same.

Alternately use Google photos w/ google drive subscription.

Which they removed a few months ago.

They just removed photos showing in drive, you still get unlimited photos/videos in original quality with a drive sub.

You can't sync your photos into drive, which is how I backed them up, using the `drive` commandline tool and then `s3cmd` to make another copy.

Sync to local storage, drag and drop, sync happens to other cloud.

Have a Mac running set to sync all iCloud content locally. From there you can manually access all media or automate sync/backup to some other service.

I noticed that recently and am wondering if I would be fine with the lowest storage option in the future. I have 128GB and have never gone above 60GB. I am sitting on 20GB's of local music that hasn't been touched since I switched to streaming music two years ago.

I "downgraded" from a 256GB iPhone X to a 64GB iPhone XS with iCloud subscription. The initial sync to iCloud Photos will take a few days, but after that one can consider the iCloud library to be the source of truth.

The iPhone XS is currently at 55.3GB filled, and I have over 400 apps installed.

128 GB is the sweet spot. I imagine there is a very large glob of users in the 50-75 GB range, which is right there on the border of "64 GB will give you problems".

Getting the Pro model, the next step up is 256 - which is super eye-rolling. The 128 GB model on the regular 11 is perfect.

The one thing that bothers me is the 2TB max on iCloud storage... I'm not close to hitting it, I think I've used 250 GB, but I'm also not that far away either with all these super HD iPhone features. I wonder if they will add a new plan at some point.

64 GB is just not enough space if you plan to use the camera a lot. I have a 2nd gen Pixel with 64 GB of space and I find myself running out of space often if I end up recording 4K video or enable RAW shots. Mind you, Pixel has unlimited full resolution storage with Google Photos so cloud storage is not an issue; but you need to be in good wifi to utilize that. While traveling, that might not be the case always.

I honestly think all these high end phones focused on camera, should at least start with 128 GB of space. OS and apps are big enough anyway.

I like how Samsung has stuck to its guns on some of the features that Apple and later others dropped, biggest being the external card support, dual sim support and audio jack. Only if they were not hell bent on adding their own customizations, I would have loved to try one.

With the release of the Note 10 and Note 10+ you can take "audio jack" off the list.

It’s not like 64 GB is useless. A lot of people don’t fill that... why make them buy more than they’ll use?

That explains the lack of a 128GB option… not at all.

I've always felt it's just clever marketing, feast or famine. Remove the Goldilocks/mid-grade option and let the customer regret not spending enough.

> clever marketing

It's more asshole design than clever.

If they had a 128GB option you could say the same thing about the lack of a 96GB option. There are hundreds of billions of potential storage sizes in this range. Apple has to be practical and choose some very small selection of storage options.

> If they had a 128GB option you could say the same thing about the lack of a 96GB option.

No. Apple offers storage upgrade in 2x increments so 96GB would make no sense, and they do offer 128GB on several models.

Except they previously offered 128 GB phones (and still do).

That argument makes sense for phones that aren't classified as "PRO".

How many professional photographers and videographers do you think are using an iPhone to perform their work? Pro is not a gated marketing term with a legally defined meaning like Champagne.

But who's classifying it as PRO? Professionals definitely aren't, and that's what matters. They aren't walking around with any phone as their main tool. Let Apple call their phones rocket ships if the name fits; astronauts won't care.

i'm inclined to believe that pro is aimed at people willing to drop a ton of money that think they're pro more than they actually do professional work, and that's sort of been a lot of apple's theme around their "pro" products regarding photography

It is just an upgrade to an existing lineup of Xs+Max, but with a reworked naming scheme (similar to iPad vs. iPad Pro). It is about as Pro as Xs+Max were.

Do you see a lot of artists using iPad Pro as their main tool? Me neither, but I do see a lot of them using it as their secondary tool that also doubles as a general-purpose personal computing device. Which is what, I feel, iPhone Pro lineup was made for.

Apple seems to keep 128 GB in reserve till the model drops to the base of the lineup. For example, the iPhone 8 is now available w/128GB at $499. Before today, it was available w/256 GB at $749. The 64 GB model dropped in price by $150 from $599 to $449.

Refurb pricing on the iPhone 8 is now $379 (64GB) / $509 (256 GB).

Because the 128 a sweet spot and most people don't have a need for more. The 64 size is just enough to push most intensive users over the hump and in to iCloud subscriptions. I'm sure Apple has all the analytics on how much space is being used by their users and how much iCloud subscriptions would take a hit with an 128 offering.

Except I just noticed the new 11 is available in all three sizes (64/128/256).

Whatever, this doesn't bother me so much about their phones. The non-upgradable storage in their laptops is a much bigger issue.

iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max is available only in 64/256/512GB capacities.

iPhone 11 (non pro) is available in 64/128/256GB capacities.

https://www.apple.com/iphone-11-pro/specs/ https://www.apple.com/iphone-11/specs/

Wholeheartedly agree, especially when demoing the ability to film simultaneously on multiple cameras, and the 4K front-facing camera. The 64 GB is really a slap in the face.

Most buyers of these phones will not film simultaneously on multiple cameras. 64GB is for them. If you're going to use that particular feature, you're buying the largest capacity phone you can.

> Most buyers of these phones will not film simultaneously on multiple cameras.

They why buy the Pro? Why not just get the normal 11?

The Pro has a bunch of other features besides filming simultaneously on multiple cameras.

People wouldn’t have booed. This is the same storage pricing as the previous two generations.

People wouldn't have booed because other than journalists, the theater was filled with Apple employees.

People booed 2 years ago when they announced the price and they booed this year when they announced the Mac Pro pricing, You could hear it when they announced that expensive stand so that’s clearly not true.

The is pure speculation, but I think it could still hold true. Consider that many Apple employees aren't involved with every project, and Apple is known to heavily segment their developers.

So you might be an Apple Fan who happens to be an employee - except you work on idk iMessages or something - you might still be disappointed to see a 1000$ stand, especially from a company you work for.

Given it's a crowded room, I highly doubt employees would be reprimanded for just booing.

Do you honestly think apple the masters of PR wouldn't care if their own employees was booing at product releases?

I would imagine that would be a pretty big deal with stern words with HR / management or worse if caught

We booed previously also.

There were no previous generations of Pro iPhones. I get that these are replacing the XS and XS Max, but those were not designated Pro. When you put that label on, you have to give all of Pro devices storage to match.

Why would people boo when the new "Pro" models have the same pricing as previous non-"Pro" models? That doesn't make sense. If anything, the "Pro" designation would be expected to cost more.

Of course, it's going to be very obvious to most people that the new iPhone 11 is the direct successor to the XR, and the iPhone Pros are the direct successors to the X, XS, and XS Max.

I think you're reading way to into the naming scheme. They simply ran out of letters and went with Pro to designate the more expensive model. It's still a smartphone, it's not like there is a large market out there for people who make and edit feature films with phones.

I agree. I've been an Android user since 2009 iirc and never owned and iPhone, I am going to buy an iPhone as my next phone due to all the shenanigans Google is doing. Every damn Android phone I've bought lately has Facebook preinstalled, theres other things, but I'm done with it all.

The one thing that kills me about iPhones is the miniscule amount of storage I get. I dont want all my things in the cloud, the cloud is useless to me without access to internet. The cloud is only useful for long-term backup storage if anything.

My phone comes with 64GB and I'm using 58 of that data, I popped in a 64GB SIM card and I'm only using 12 probably cause I filled it up before and wanted to have room for more photos and stuff. I may well buy an iPhone but I want more storage space out of the box, not some cloud solution. It also annoys me that the Macbook Air starts out at 128GB, that gets eaten up so quickly as a developer.

Pixel phones don't have facebook preinstalled

They've got the rest of Google's software preinstalled on the other hand. I don't want every single Google service on my phone, and some of them you can't uninstall.

I was actually surprised at how obnoxious the forced Google Assistant integration was on an Android One phone compared to an Essential Phone, which is about as bloat-free as you can get for Android.

I always loved LG and their G series of phones despite always bundling Facebook garbage, and this time around they added a button for Google Assistant. I disabled that button, too often would I accidentally press it and now my convos go off into the corporate cloud to be lost in who knows what state. Worse yet: I can't repurpose the button. I would love a "Skip Song" button on my phone for when I'm driving.

A preinstalled app is the reason to switch the platforms? Sorry, not buying that. It takes a few seconds to uninstall.

I am in the same boat. I have an S7 from one of the major carriers that came preinstalled with Facebook. You can disable it, but not uninstall. Also, there is an update to "Facebook Services" which I can't seem to find and disable. I absolutely will not get another phone from Samsung (or others) that comes with Facebook preinstalled.

>A preinstalled app is the reason to switch the platforms?

No. What they actually said :-

>Every damn Android phone I've bought lately has Facebook preinstalled, theres other things, but I'm done with it all.

This isn't new. Both the X and XS jumped from 64GB to 256GB.

Good point, although those phones were not called Pro phones. They were top-of-the-line, but it was more understandable to offer a 64 GB version without the Pro moniker.

FWIW, there are other people in the world beside you. And they have different needs and desires. I am one of those people. 64GB is perfect for me. I wouldn't upgrade to 128GB of storage even if it were available.

> FWIW, there are other people in the world beside you. And they have different needs and desires.

Which everyone supports, if there was a reasonably priced 128gb option for the Pro, the complaint wouldn't be as strong. But there isn't such an option. You either use 64, or at least 4x that much (which, after subtracting 14 from the OS, is actually 5x that much). That's just a pretty silly scale, not granular at all.

So you squeeze tons of consumers to take too little because they don't want to pay for a 5x jump when they need 2x, or squeeze them into doing just that and overpaying, or squeeze them into a cloud subscription. It's not matching the product to the needs in the way that they could.

Meanwhile the 11 gets 128, just not the Pro.

> Meanwhile the 11 gets 128, just not the Pro.

There are three tiers. On the 11, the tiers are 64, 128, 256. On the Pro the tiers are 64, 256, 512. If you want to make an entry level model at 64gb, a top tier at 512gb, and one tier in the middle, then that's a logical way to step things up.

> So you squeeze tons of consumers to take too little because they don't want to pay for a 5x jump when they need 2x, or squeeze them into doing just that and overpaying, or squeeze them into a cloud subscription. It's not matching the product to the needs in the way that they could.

But this logic works the other way: if you only have a 128gb entry level model, then you are forcing consumers who only need 64gb to buy more storage than they need.

So your real gripe is that there isn't a 128gb tier in between the 64gb and 256gb. But the price difference between those tiers is only $150. So the 128gb tier would be something like $50 or $100 less than the 256gb tier. If your huge problem is that you have to pay an extra 5-10% of purchase price because their storage tiers don't perfectly align with your needs, then maybe you're not the target audience.

And 128gb is not some magic number. What about people who only need 300gb? Why should they be forced to pay for 512gb when they only need an additional 50gb on top of the 256gb? Because you have to split things up somehow, that's why. Things just didn't get split in a way that is convenient for you.

If they'd stuck everything in it you want and the base price was $1600 people would be complaining about that and it would be a brand shattering headline. Yes, they are marketing people; but they are balancing a lot of constraints -- a little engineers...

[EDIT: "brand" instead of "branch"]

> If you're going to call it Pro and talk about how you can shoot professional video

If I'll decide to shot professional video, it will be more suitable device like Go Pro or Sony, depends from type.

"Pro" label completely lost his sense today, just ignore it.

Because when you run out of space on your baseline pro model, they can sell you subscription to their cloud storage

I have the XS Max 64 gig and I haven't really had a problem with space and I shoot quite a bit. I am pretty religious with offloading to the cloud, google drive in particular.

Now would I buy another 64 gig again? Probably not, at least with arcade coming and knowing how fast the games eat up space.

I have 64GB Max (for the screen size and zoom lens) and I'm perfectly happy with it. iMessage and Safari don't even need that much. Not everyone has to shoot motion pictures on their phone.

This storage hasn't changed for almost a decade now, I'd expect 64GB to have been canned well before something like, say, the headphone jack. Even 128GB is quite low these days.

What? the 2017 iPhone was the first with 64gb base storage as far as I know. 2 years later, it's still the base. Disappointing but not so crazy, especially with the cloud option.

A decade ago we had the 2009 iPhone (3GS) with 8gb base and 32gb max. 64gb didn't exist in the iPhone.

Still I think it'd have been fine to go 64 for the iPhone, but do 128 base for the Pro... Ah well, maybe next year.

Have iPhone X models appeared in Apple's refurb store before today? I just checked, and they're now available. The new top models seem outrageously expensive to me.

They have to to make the price point and keep the big profit margin. Same reason the iPhone 11 still has a sub-1080p screen even though it's a 6" screen.

yeah anything less than 512gb should be considered junk and not pro.... because I don't like the cloud. (I am not being sarcastic, those companies are just too greedy..)

According to Apple's specs, there is still a 256 GB option.

Sorry, I updated my edit.

Still ridiculous, $150 more for an upgrade that most people will have to purchase.

I would be quite surprised if "most people" bought the $150 upgrade.

Well, I suppose you can always attach a USB harddisk, right (?)

Because it has been that way for years? Why would people boo for the existing structure?

Why would people boo for a bad thing? I don't know.

There's no excuse for under-speccing a $1000 phone and charging $150 to add a $40 NAND chip to it.

(Looks at Apple's profit margins and revenue)

Oh that's why.

I mean that's like booing the Lightning connector. It's a known quantity and is no worse this year than last year.

Yes, that's fine. Boo that too.

Why are you against booing bad things? Are you an APPL investor making a lot of money on these choices? If not, I really can't understand your position here.

You're defining "bad things" to suit you. If you boo the lightning connector, I boo a switch to USB-C. Why make me buy all new cables? Why make me replace my nightstand charger?

Boo changes you don't like, okay, fine. Boo the status quo? That's... odd.

Only a small subset of the population has any lightning connectors at all. The present standard is usb-c. Using an out-of-date standard is worth booing. It's like if a monitor continued sticking with dvi and never made the move to displayport or hdmi or usb-c.

USB-C is far from the current standard, it's pretty much only used by flagship Android phones and some laptops. I would say far more people have a lightning device than a USB-C device right now.

You must be living in an entirely different universe because everyone I know uses tons of usb-c all day.

How about the most popular noise cancelling headphones, the Sony 1000XM3 (usb-c). I see them everywhere.

Some laptops? More like all laptops. Find me one being sold now without usb-c. They would be a joke. The best tablet, the iPad Pro is usb-c (though yes I know the lower end ones are lightning).

What about the best video gear. All the best mirrorless video cameras like the Panasonic GH5, Sony A7iii, Nikon Z7, Fuji T-X3, BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera, all with usb-c. The best webcam out there, the Logitech Brio with usb-c.

Let's talk about specialty gear. The most popular external disk, Sandisk Portable Extreme with usb-c. The most popular mobile hotspot, the Nighthawk mobile router has usb-c. The most popular audio interface, Focusrite, uses usb-c pretty much for all their products now. The best presentation remote, the Logitech Spotlight is usb-c charging.

Me and my friends have flashlights, shavers, toothbrushes, VR headsets and remotes, all with usb-c. Great for travel.

Basically, any good product being released now is usb-c, and has been for the past couple years.

>I would say far more people have a lightning device than a USB-C device right now.

This seems funny since Android outsells Apple 4 to 1 and Windows outsells Apple 5 to 1, (and Android and Windows use USB-C for phones and laptops respectively). So quick math here would tell you that USB-C penetration is 4 to 5 times more broad than lightning based purely on sales.

EDIT: Also Apple uses USB-C on some laptops, so those numbers would affect it too

But that includes all Androids, for a very long time USB-C was only in the flagship Android phones and even today there are lots of low end Android phones being made that are Micro USB. Plus, lightning has been out for 7 years in all of Apple's mobile products, while USB-C has only been semi-mainstream for 3-4 years.

If I had to rank connectors by how many devices use them it would probably be Micro USB - Lightning - USB-C

Edit: if we include laptops and other non-mobile devices, I would say that normal USB far surpasses everything else usage wise, USB-C seems to only be in the high end laptops and even then most laptops have some normal USB ports as well.

Every existing iPhone user has a lightning connector, and the cable(s) or charger to charge with it.

>You're defining "bad things" to suit you. I

Excuse me? 64GB standard storage for a "PRO" labeled $1000 phone that extensively advertises its professional video capacity is not an arbitrary or personal definition of bad. It's objectively inferior to its competition. It's objectively the lowest storage space of any $1000+ phone on the market.

That you would conflate this discussion to think these are arbitrary opinions seems dishonest.

>"Boo changes you don't like, okay, fine. Boo the status quo? That's... odd."

It seems like you accept predatory profit-driven business decisions as "status quo" even when competitors offer far better options. I don't get your definition of "status quo" when it's synonymous "worst in class".

The Galaxy Note 10 at $1000 comes standard with 256GB, an upgrade which makes the iPhone cost $1150.

But sure, "status quo", as long as the current state of the market and state of competition isn't considered...

$40 NAND? You do realize apple doesn’t just use any NAND, right? They use high performance ones. Those cost more.

Let's not pretend that Apple doesn't charge HUGE premiums for memory/storage.

For the iMac Pro it's $400 to go from 32GB to 64GB of memory. High end memory is around $140 for the same jump. "High performance" - it's the same 2666MHz chips.

Storage? Samsung NVMe prices are around $300 per TERABYTE. Tell more about the high performance silicon Apple is using that is worth $800/TB.

Where did I say they didn’t charge a premium? All I said was I think $40 is on the low end.

1TB 970 EVO is $170 on Amazon.com, not $300.

I was trying to be indulgent and go with the PRO line.

The highest speed consumer M.2 drives go around $180/TB. Apple doesn't pay retail prices. $40 could well be a significant overestimate, especially given it's displacing an existing chip.

> I can see why they didn't talk about this at the event. People would have booed.

I doubt it, those events get gasps and thunderous applause over the most basic features that competitors have had for a while.